The Road to Beaver Mill

by Annis Pratt

In this third volume of my Infinite Games Series the Marshlands are in peril of being completely drained by the cabal of Merchants and Ministers determined to develop them as arable lands. Our Marshlander friends must call their allies to a final battle. The problem is that everyone knows about their plans but Clare's eleven year old daughter Bethany, who is too stubborn and self-willed to trust with secrets. She is sent instead to visit her best friend Ben's Western Fisher folk, whose dystopian community utterly rejects her. She fares better with her warm hearted cousins among the more utopian Eastern Fisher folk, but runs away from them too, to seek her fortune in the perilous city of Brent.

175 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 12, 2016

About the author

I have always longed for a world where people are more interested in each other's good than their own. I have always lived in a world where people are more interested in competing for profit and status than in each other's good.

Do you live in a world of greed and long for a world of good?

What human evils endanger our beloved planet?

Can we do anything about it?

My Infinite Games Series - The Marshlanders, Fly Out of the Darkness, The Road to Beaver Mill (all available on amazon.com); and the Battle for the Black Fen, forthcoming with Moon Willow Press in summer 2017 - are my way of asking those questions and suggesting answers to them.

I taught English and Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for many years, but I eventually threw my full professorship out of the window to engage in community activism and novel writing.

I chose speculative fiction with a real world (non-fantasy) flavor to tell the story about how environmental degradation began in the early modern era, based on the historical conflict between "Merchant Adventurers" and self-sustaining Fen dwellers. My novel series fits nicely into the new genre of Eco-Fiction.

During research trips to East Anglia, I discovered that the Fen people revolted against the Bishops at Ely as early as the eleventh century, rose up against unjust landlords in the thirteenth century, and, as the Fen Tigers, conducted such successful guerrilla skirmishes against the drainage schemes of the Earls of Bedford that it took 300 years for their completion.

My Marshlanders seek harmony with nature and each other. Their enemies want to drain their wetlands for exploitation and profit.

I believe my invented world makes for more compelling page-turners than if I wrote strictly historical ficton. My Infinite Games series is suitable for young adult readers as well as for adults.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book begins with an interesting set-up. I was especially interested in the author's stated goal in writing the Marshlanders series: to show what happens to a society when its environment is degraded. I was engaged immediately with Bethany, an 11-year-old girl who I thought was going to be the main character. She was relatable and the circumstances of her headstrong behavior and rescue were well portrayed. I found the idea of riding the wind to be really fascinating and worth exploring more. The author has a good eye for detail and a strong voice. The matter-of-fact attitude displayed by the characters towards sex and other bodily functions is refreshing and, I think, appropriate to YA readers. Overall the book has an unsentimental, down-to-earth tone which makes the imagined world real to all the senses and helps the reader identify with the setting and the ecological theme. But about 2/3 of the way through, the book lost focus, new characters arrived, and I became confused about what was happening. Bethany went offstage for long stretches. There is some excellent material here; perhaps it needs a more editing and shaping. Or perhaps one just needs to start with the first book in the series. I received this book as part of a giveaway and it whetted my appetite for more, but I wish it stood better on its own.